Media reaction to Julian Assange and his successful request for
asylum in Ecuador has certainly been mixed. It ranges from outright
incredulity and disdain, to euphoria over what appears to be
Assange’s artful dodge from a suspiciously aggressive Swedish
extradition attempt, and very possibly, the iron tentacles of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Julian Assange

But one thing we can all count on, like the lap dog waiting
faithfully at the window each evening for his master’s
appearance, is the snarky invective and boorish patois of the
media’s “Beautiful People,” otherwise known as the
chatterati of reporters, pundits and personalities who have made it,
are very protective of it, and will bully anyone who
threatens it or the establishment that sustains it.

On Thursday, Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino carefully
laid out the reasons
his country was granting Assange political asylum. Chief among
them: Ecuador’s belief that Assange’s work with WikiLeaks has made him a target of powerful government reprisals.
In addition, Ecuador received no guarantee that if Assange were to be
extradited to Sweden to face questions regarding accusations of rape and
sexual molestation (read the full background — not just
the cliff notes — on these sex allegations here),
he would not be diverted to a third
country (the United States), to face retaliatory charges in an unfair
trial over leaks he’s published since 2010.

Furthermore, in reference to his home country of Australia, Ecuador finds
Assange is “without protection and assistance to be received from the
State which is a citizen.”

Despite this, the Beautiful People continue to deny Assange
is anything more than a spoiled egomaniac keen on evading assault
charges by conjuring up “conspiracies” and martyring
himself on the altar of free speech.

One need only to go to The Washington Post, the ultimate
mirror of today’s flavorless American establishment media to
get a taste of this warmed over gruel. Late Monday, WaPo
published an editorial calling Assange “the WikiLeaks
founder and self-styled victim of an imagined international
political conspiracy,” right in the lede.

“Mr. Assange claims that extradition to Sweden will result
in his being turned over to the United States … Rafael
Correa, Ecuador’s outspokenly anti-American president, has
stoked fantasies like these, having welcomed Mr. Assange to the
so-called “’club of the persecuted.’”

The paper, which is quick to accuse Assange and Correa of
indulging in make-believe, then attempts to discredit Correa
by concluding the president is moving toward a Hugo Chavez-style
autocracy, and that he had better think twice about crossing the U.S., which “allows Ecuador to export many goods duty-free,
supports roughly 400,000 jobs in a country of 14 million people and
accounts for one-third of Ecuador’s foreign sales.”

“Congress could easily decide to diminish that privileged
commercial access early next year,” the paper concluded. Why?
For calling the U.S. a bully? A bully is what a bully does, no? The
reader is left with one question — if the editorial board
believes that Congress might take 40,000 jobs from poor Ecuadorans
in mere retaliation for the mean things Correa says about America, is it
so hard to believe the U.S. might want to put the screws to Assange,
who helped publish hundreds of thousands of its secret military
reports and diplomatic cables?

Writers at The New York Times have taken a similar tack
this week, ascribing ulterior motives to Correa, who remains a blank
slate to most American readers (Antiwar tackled the emerging
bond between the Latin American leader and the WikiLeaks’
founder here
in June), dismissing outright the seriousness of Ecuador’s
decision to grant Assange asylum.

“Ecuador’s decision to grant asylum to Julian
Assange,” and the ensuing “political standoff with
Britain… has little to do with protecting Mr. Assange’s
right to a fair trial or freedom of the press — which
Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, has trampled upon at
home,” writes
op-ed contributor Anita Isaacs, author and professor of
political science at Haverford College.

“Instead, it is an attempt by Mr. Correa to settle old
scores with the United States, display his political prowess in the
run-up to Ecuadorean presidential elections next year and make a
power play for a leadership role on the Latin American left.”
After acknowledging that Correa has been democratically elected
twice and has a “strong” chance of winning again, Isaacs
suggests “his decision to thumb his nose at Washington by
granting asylum to Mr. Assange enables Ecuador to seize the
political limelight” from Venezuelan dictator Chavez and
really shine.

But
like all the other major newspapers of record, from WaPo to Germany’s
Der Spiegel,
the Old Gray Lady enjoys the endless fodder WikiLeaks has provided
for them. Their reporters have been able to build reports and
investigations, break news and flesh out stories about Iraq,
Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and even domestic intelligence.
Distancing themselves after the fact is called “having it both
ways,” and the Beautiful People really know how to work it.

When
the dust settled on that, most of our Beautiful People were warming
to the government’s assertions that Assange was a renegade and
possible criminal, not a clean, honest journalist like themselves.

A
pair of hit pieces by The
New York Times,
which actually worked with WikiLeaks and more
than reaped the fruits of its risks and labors, effectively cast
Assange out as the dirty “Nancy Boy” messenger, if not
mentally
unbalanced. One of those pieces was
produced by editor Bill Keller, who still can’t decide
whether Assange is a journalist
or not. Even so, Assange under the NYT microscope is a strange,
Peter Pan-like figure — certainly not “of the body.”
Subsequent caricatures of his narcissism, his misogynistic,
tyrannical
complexes, have only congealed with each unflattering portrait
and tell-all interview by former colleagues and WikiLeaks supporters.

Indeed, some mainstream editors who’ve worked with Assange
have expressed concern with his methods,
proprietary impulses and need for control. If sans the ad
hominem attacks, that’s fair game. But Keller’s
“frank” recollections about his time with Assange smack
of a smear job and again, a cheap way for the paper to distance
itself and have it “both ways.”

Those unfriendlies include former friends in the British press,
which spent a lot of creative Twitter blasts and ink poking fun at
Assange’s “balcony speech” from the embassy on
Sunday. Some were more vituperative than others. Melanie
Phillips, a lefty turned right-wing scold, who may see Assange
as some mocking doppelganger of her past, called him the “Eva
Peron of the ether” the event “a manipulative,
melodramatic, malodorous circus.”

They all invariably engage in the now shopworn ritual of ragging
on Assange’s appearance, the words “pale” and
“pallid” interchangeably used to hint at a weak,
vampire-like persona. And then always, the awkward geek, the misfit.

“Far from giving him a Churchillian look, his blue shirt,
crimson tie and cropped hair created — as one wag pointed out
on Twitter — a curious resemblance to John
Inman, from the 1970s’ sitcom Are you Being Served?”

More seriously, McSmith and other
critics complain, Assange fancies himself the impresario of a
drama that blatantly ignores the “the elephant in the room,”
the fact he’s wanted for questioning for alleged sex crimes by
Sweden, and that Assange’s request for asylum only followed his exhausted attempts to avoid returning to deal with it.

Again, fair game. The allegations
brought forward by Miss A and Miss W, the two women with whom
Assange had admitted having consensual sex, and by whom he is
accused of not using and/or tampering with condoms and not taking a
STD test when asked, should be debated openly and not belittled. And
not all of his critics are Beautiful People, but former supporters —
as
this report suggests — disenchanted by the backlash against Assange’s accusers, and his refusal to face the
charges in Sweden.

But the record shows that Assange cooperated in the first
arrest warrant (which was cancelled in August 2010), and refused to return
to Sweden from the UK for questioning when he felt the new inquiry was
part of a broader, politically motivated attack. He has endured jail and 500
days of house arrest, and struck out on all available appeals with
the UK courts. He’s offered to meet with Swedish officials in
London. They’ve refused.

He is not “on the run,” but immovable in the belief
he is the subject of life-threatening U.S. grand jury investigation
that could land him in similar straits as one Bradley
Manning, the Army private who allegedly handed WikiLeaks the
thousands of documents that subsequently embarrassed world powers
and possibly
thrown the Arab world into revolutionary turmoil.

“It’s hardly surprising that when you twist the
lion’s tail, the lion may get very angry,” said famed
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, in
a recent interview, noting the U.S. government’s ability to
shut down WikiLeaks’ funding “by intimidating, without
even invoking the law, places like PayPal and Amazon and others from
giving any money to or serving as distribution channels is very
dismaying,” as is the propensity of the Obama administration to
seek prosecution of government whistleblowers more than any White
House in modern history.

“It’s a sign, and not unique, of the way in which
our fundamental rights, our Bill of Rights, our constitutional
freedoms, have been abridged by the last 10 years and more,”
he said. Not to mention a lot of trumped-up charges and ruined careers —
just ask Thomas
Drake and Jesselyn
Radack, two post-9/11 whistleblowers who have had to build new
lives and professions after they crossed the U.S. government.

“Whatever your opinion of WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange, he was right when he called for an end to the war on
whistleblowers in
his speech outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London yesterday,”
wrote
Radack, who now advocates on behalf of whistleblowers for the
Washington-based Government Accountability Project.

“While my clients’ stories differ greatly from Assange’s,
the Obama administration has threatened to criminally prosecute all
of them with the same draconian Espionage Act, a law meant to go
after spies not whistleblowers,” she said.

“And the effect of the Obama administration’s policy—if
not the goal—is the same for my clients and Assange: to silence
dissent.”

The bottom line, for whatever reason (the elite’s own
narcissism, its insecurity against those who don’t “fit
in,” its own sense of entitlement and need to protect the cash
cows and institutions that give them relevancy, for starters), the
Beautiful People would rather assume Assange is a Space Oddity, or
worse, a deluded sex criminal, self-righteously raging against
hobgoblins and perceived persecutions, than consider him a man with very legitimate fears, bolstered here,
here
and
here, about his likely fate at the hands of a vengeful U.S.
government.

And they could all just be jealous of Assange, which keeps the
focus on him of course, and not the revolution of New Journalism he
represents, one that’s taken reporting out of the newsroom and
onto an open frontier populated by “citizen journalists”
and bloggers who don’t necessarily play by establishment
rules.

For that, we should probably ignore the snark and bark and try to keep the story on a balanced wave. Like
mom used to say, this ain’t a popularity contest. And we can’t all be beautiful.

Anyone that thinks Assange's legal troubles are based on some trumped up charges of sexual assault is too clueless to bother with. This is clearly about a man that has embarrassed the empire.

Like Manning before him, the goal of the American regime is to make him an example. He is to be punished to prevent further revelations by other whistleblowers of US government malfeasance, illegalities, incompetence, and pettiness.

jeff_davis

And please be sure to add that he is ***already*** being punished. Despite no trial, no charges, and the self-evident lack of any credible basis for charges, he has been effectively "neutralized", imprisoned in London for more than a year, and now at the Ecuadoran embassy.

The US intent to make an example of Assange is already largely successful.

The question is: In the new internet age, will the treatment of Manning/Assange achieve its goal of broader intimidation, or will it radicalize and mobilize a billion Wikileaks supporters, confirming their dedication to humiliating the ruling elite wherever and whenever possible?

The importance of the work of WikiLeaks is certainly in danger of being buried by the court scribes of celebrity culture, and we should remember that the organization is currently the target of corporate, as well as government reprisals.
As Kelley points out in this worthy account, WikiLeaks has also exposed a plethora of corporate skullduggery, in addition to crimes of the state.
The British journalist David Edwards meanwhile has also written an article about the major preoccupations of these 'beautiful people': http://medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content…

The importance of the work of WikiLeaks is certainly in danger of being buried by the court scribes of celebrity culture, and we should remember that the organization is currently the target of corporate, as well as government reprisals.
As Kelley points out in this worthy account, WikiLeaks has also exposed a plethora of corporate skullduggery, in addition to crimes of the state.
The British journalist David Edwards meanwhile has also written an article about the major preoccupations of these 'beautiful people': http://medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content…

Mike Smith

Why had Assange been in custody for two years and the authorities refused to interview him? He is not charged with any crime and remained in Sweden for over a month after the incident specifically to answer the charges. It is obvious Anna Arden was a CIA asset. She worked in Cuba and was deported for being part of an anti-Castro movement. She also worked in Miami with anti-Casto forces there. She was a secretary for the Socialist Democratic party and was used to pass information to the CIA regarding the Swedish government's support of US and NATO intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Arden, one of Assange's "accusers" even stopped cooperating with prosecutors. She was also a radical feminist who wrote an internet guide on how to bring false charges against a man who "screwed you over".

If you type in "Anna Arden CIA" you will see all the info connecting her to US intelligence. She was also a radical feminist and "Gender Equality Officer" on a college campus where her co-accuser of Assange, Sophia Wilen, worked for her. All this has been kept from the media but is available in the book "Assanage and Government in a Wikileaks World". Arden also goes by the name Bernardin and has been known to have moved to the West Bank to work in a program involving Christian outreach to Palestinians. So, it seems between being a secretary for the Democratic Socialist Party, an anti-Castro activist and forming contacts with Palestinians, she has time to meet with the CIA to create "honeypot traps" for her CIA handlers. This is why she no longer works for Sweden's main political party anymore. Everyone knows she was a CIA asset.

Arden asked Assange to stay in her home, had sex with him, took him out to eat, introduced him to another sex kitten, Sophia Wilen, who also had repeated sexual relations with him, then had a meeting with her accomplice/co-accuser and finally made these charges against Assange weeks later. Assange stayed, answered all charges, had in fact not been charged in two years and has never been interviewed even while having been in custody for two years. Does the American government, -my government, the UK's government and the Swedish government think the rest of the world is stupid or is it they just don't care how brazenly they now abuse power?

Also, Arden, the girl who introduced Assange to Sophia Wilen, had Wilen stalk Assange and then when she was not able to meet him after his speaking engagements, had Arden personally introduce Assange to Wilen. This was all caught and posted on a Youtube video. Also, the website page Arden made to exact revenge by bringing false charges against a man who "screwed you over" tried to hide her website, but it was mirrored and activists reposted all over the internet.

So, all Sweden has to do is guarantee it will not extradite Assange and I am sure he will return to Sweden, There is no case against him and Arden has ceased working with prosecutors. The regular prosecutor would not even bring the charges and Arden had to rely on a political crony to even get them to decide to question Assange, something the Swedish government has now refused to do in over two years.

To see why this fiasco is going on, go to the Facebook page "Jews Against Zionism and War with Iran".

Smithboy

Dear lord!! Our country is being taught how to protect whistle-blowers by ….Ecuador? It has come to this.

liberal

Kelley,

Great column.

Kevin

Really enjoyed this read. the WP article you mention, i posted a comment there asking them why they would post Op-ED in complete contradiction to what their own readers thing, then posted this link to their own site.http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post…

Showing that 94% of their readers agree with Julian's right to seek political asylum. They removed my comment claiming i violated some term of their service.

Kevin

Really enjoyed this read. the WP article you mention, i posted a comment there asking them why they would post Op-ED in complete contradiction to what their own readers thing, then posted this link to their own site.http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post…

Showing that 94% of their readers agree with Julian's right to seek political asylum. They removed my comment claiming i violated some term of their service.

Great column. You are one of two or three journalists who never disappoint me. One small tip – the phrase is "blind-sided" as in hit where one could not or did not see it coming. "Blind-sighted" would be the ability of a blind person to sense the presence of a light source. Which also kind of works.
Thanks for the many excellent columns. I've been a reader and admirer since you first appeared on Antiwar.com

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, is a longtime
political reporter for FoxNews.com and
a contributing editor at The American Conservative.
She is also a Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today magazine. Her Twitter account is @KelleyBVlahos.